Ozark Cirque

06/25/2026

Life is a circus y dance to Aphex Twin ❤️‍🩹🎪❤️‍🔥

she forgot to upload here :)

05/31/2026

"If the circus is to be capable of staging contemporary subjectivities and identities, it is crucial that we start experimenting with different relationships to our apparatuses, techniques and/or objects. Already the relationship between the body and the object has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. It has gone from physical dominance over the trajectories of the object (traditional circus and nouveau cirque), to the object dominating the trajectories of the body (contemporary circus). This is a very important shift, and one that perhaps reflects or engages with our contemporary experience of the world. Like the understanding of human action as fundamentally tragic, it connects circus to the culture and the times in which we live.
[...]
If we want circus to become more innovative, surprising, weird and disturbing, we need to understand the intimate bond between the forms of the circus and the content that we can express within those forms. We need to find out what specifics define circus as circus, and this beyond technical skill. Any attempt at defining what we do must be matched by an attempt to mark out the field for artistic research within circus. The two overlap. They are two poles on the same continuum. Without research no ‘new’ definition of the medium can be reached, and without a ‘new’ definition of the medium there can be no possible pathways for artistic research beyond technical skill.

Since circus has historically occupied a somewhat marginal position within the performing arts (as it did in society in general) we need to understand the dynamics of our changing position. Maybe it is time to go beyond circus. Let us search for countless different answers to the questions of why we want to do circus, how we want to do circus, and what we (can possibly) express by doing circus. Let us do that together. Let us discuss and contradict each other."

-BAUKE LIEVENS' OPEN LETTER TO THE CIRCUS "The need to redefine"
( https://thecircusdialogues.com/open-letter/the-need-to-redefine/ )

Between Being and Imagining: Towards a Methodology for Contemporary Circus (2013-17) brought into practice several dramaturgical ‘actions’ in dialogue. This first artistic research project by Bauke Lievens tried to make connections between theory and practice, between the ‘inside’ of circus ...

04/17/2026

We are so excited to share what we've been working on with you!

Ozark Cirque & friends present:
Jodorowski's Santa Sangre
- a live performance film screening 🎡
at the Medium, in Springdale

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*Thursday
5/14/2026 · 6:00 PM · 8:00 PM
&
*Friday
5/15/2026 · 6:00 PM · 8:00 PM
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~ General Admission ~$15..{a limited number of $20 tickets are available each night and come with a temporary tattoo matching Fenix' chest tat}...
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Throughout the film, local performing artists will be debuting never-before-seen acts and an expression of interculturalism and identity transmuting that will make this one for the books!

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The Film:
Santa Sangre (1989) is a surrealist psychological horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, in collaboration with Claudio Argento. Both were active within the Panic Movement of the 60s - a response to the absorption of Surrealism into popular culture and the depoliticalization of art.

Set in Mexico City, the film follows Fenix, who grows up in a circus with abusive parents, Co**ha and Orgo, alongside his childhood friend Alma—whose name means “soul.” The film offers a prismatic vision of resilience, particularly of the divine feminine, even in its most violent or wounded forms.

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Why we love it:
We love Jodorowsky’s ability to embody what Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin describes as the “universal spirit of the carnival.” By depicting life & deathhalppenig a traveling circus as a space where life and death coexist, the film echoes Bakhtin’s theories of circus origins in pre-Christian Rome—rooted in masked street processions, solstice rituals, and the worship of Bacchus, god of chaos and renewal. Through this framework, Jodorowsky transforms the circus into a site of transcendence, madness, and revelation.

This project is supported by the Creative Exchange Fund (CXF) at The Medium, a program that provides artists, creatives, and cultural organizers with funding and free space to experiment and take bold risks. Learn more at themedium.art/cxf